Aging and Dying

Bhikkhu
Prayudh Payutto

[A talk delivered on
April 22, 2539/1996, to an international medical symposium
on Death and Dying.]

-ooOoo-

Distinguished participants:

Today I have been expected to speak on
death and dying, but I would like instead to speak on aging and dying
rather than on death and dying.

Old age and death are natural phenomena.
In accordance with the law of nature all conditioned things are
impermanent and liable to change, being subject to causes and
conditions. Everything that has a beginning must at last come to an end.
The lives of all beings, after being born, must decay and die. Aging is
just the decline of life and the decay of the faculties; and death is
the passing-away, the termination of the time of life, the break-up of
the aggregates and the casting off of the body.

Although, by nature, aging and death are
merely facts of life, psychologically they often mean to the worldlings
a loss of hope, the frustration of all aspirations, a leap into a great
darkness, and thus the feelings of fear and anguish.

In spite of degeneration and loss
inherent in aging and dying, old age can be turned into an opportunity
for development, and death into that for a sublime attainment. At the
least, one should live the good and worthwhile life of the old, and can
then die unconfused or even die an enlightened death.

A human's life span is traditionally
divided into three stages, the first, the middle and the last stage. Of
course, with attention to what is good and right, one should live a good
life through all the three stages of life. However if, through
negligence, one fails to fulfill the good life in the first and middle
stages of life, there is still room left for one to fulfill it in the
last one, that is, in one's old age.

Not only when still a young black-haired
man in the prime of youth, but also when he became old, the Buddha was
still perfect in his lucid wisdom. This means a happy and fruitful life
in old age is a possibility. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, one can
even make progress in the good life and attain to perfection in this
last stage of life.

So many people spend the whole time of
their early and middle years in search of fame and fortune, in seeking
after wealth and power, and in pursuit of material pleasures. They might
say that their lives have been worthwhile. Really, they are not. It is
not enough. They have not got the best of their lives. They have not
realized the full potential of being human. To live longer into old age
gives them an advantage over other people as they are in a position to
make advances towards fulfilling these potentials.

What are these potentials? There are a
lot of them. Examples are the various kinds of inner and independent
happiness through inner development. In short, there are a lot of the
good that people in search of wealth, power and pleasures will never
experience and enjoy except that they survive to develop them in their
old age.

As long life up to an old age is an
advantage if one learns how to utilize it, we should look after
ourselves well so that we will have long lives. Of course, good care of
life is needed. We should look after ourselves well, physically and
behaviorally, emotionally and volitionally, and intellectually and
intuitionally. The interdependence and interrelationship among these
aspects of life should be rightly steered so that they become
intercontributary.

First, physical care should not be
separated from behavioral development in relationship with the social
and natural environment. In addition to sufficient nutritious food and
physical exercise, right attitudes and behavior such as beneficial
habits should be developed in connection with eating, general material
consumption and recreations.

As all know well, the present-day
society functions as a system of competition and consumption where
people fall into the state of time-scarcity because of competitive
individualism and personal pursuit of material pleasures. In the context
of such a society, people find it difficult to take care of other people
and, therefore, people in old age should be more self-reliant. In these
situations, they should devote themselves more to an intimate
relationship with the natural environment. They should enjoy physical
movements and activities amidst nature.

As far as personal relationships are
concerned, love of sons and daughters leads to concerns about their weal
and woe which are satisfied by parental care. However, when children
have grown up and can take care of themselves, they take responsibility
for themselves. At this point, the concerns of the old parents over
their grown-up sons and daughters, or of the grandparents over their
grand-children, often lead to vexation on the part of the latter and an
upset on the part of the former. It is not good to the mental health of
both sides.

There is a principle in the Buddha's
teaching that when children grow up and are able to take responsibility
for their own lives, parents are expected to develop equanimity. This
means love must be balanced by equanimity. In other words, love that
grows into attachment, whether to persons or things, must be replaced by
equanimity. Love must be maintained at the level of loving-kindness or
friendly love. In Thailand, aged people find the balance of
loving-kindness with equanimity in joining their peers in the Buddhist
observances at a village monastery and even stay there overnight every
seven or eight days.

To go further in emotional care and
volitional encouragement, the elderly should develop in themselves the
will to do something. This means that one should have something in mind
that one values highly and has a loving interest in, which one wants
very strongly to do, for example, the writing of some book on one's
cherished experiences, the carrying out of a gardening program, or the
search for knowledge of a spiritual matter. Let one's will to action be
so strong as to make one say to oneself: "I cannot die if I have
not completed this task."

Many of us can think of elderly people,
especially those after retirement, who, not long after retiring from
work, became subject to loneliness, dejected, down-hearted and gloomy.
They quickly withered away and died. Some suffer from depression and
even commit suicide. But the elderly who develop the will to action will
not be so. Their willpower and strong spirit will only develop. They
have something to commit themselves to and there, also, they will apply
reasoning and intellectual investigation. They will become strong and
healthy, both in mind and in body. The Buddha says that one who has the
four qualities of the desire to act, strong willpower, the sense of
commitment, and the spirit of investigation or experimentation, can live
long throughout the whole life span.

Now we come to the boundary between the
heart and the head, where the emotion will be refined, made wholesome
and strengthened by the intellectual faculty. However, in passing, I
would like to mention another two points.

Elderly people usually have bodies that
are frail and easily afflicted with diseases. This tends to make them
worried and dejected. Here they are encouraged by the Buddha to train
themselves: "Although my body is ill, my mind shall not be
ill," or "Even though my body becomes frail, my mind shall not
be weakened."

Another point is concerned with
happiness. Many or most people think of happiness in terms of sensual or
material pleasures. If happiness consists in satisfying the senses, life
in old age will be a great torment, forever deprived of happiness,
because aging means, among other things, the degeneration and decay of
the sense-faculties.

In reality, there are roughly two kinds
of happiness. One is sensual happiness, dependent on external material
pleasures. As this kind of happiness is dependent on material objects
outside ourselves, those who are devoted to its enjoyment become
pleasure-seekers or the seekers after happiness. In the pursuit of this
kind of happiness, the pleasure-seekers learn and spend a lot of energy
to develop the ability to look for and recognize the goods to gratify
their senses. This has even been unconsciously taken by these people to
be the meaning of education.

But it is the gift of human beings that
they are possessed of the potential for creativity. Through this
potential, they have created, using their creative thinking and
constructive ideas, the human world of inventions and technologies.
Directed inside, this potential can be developed for the creation of
inner happiness and the various kinds of skillful mental qualities.

Unfortunately, the pleasure-seekers or
happiness-pursuers, being engrossed in the search for external objects
to gratify their senses, fail to develop this potential for the inner
creativity. This creative or formative potential left undeveloped then
works out for their inner lack of happiness and for various negative
mental states. Thus in this way the pleasure-seekers, while seeking
external happiness through the gratification of the senses with material
objects, create or form inside themselves stress, anxiety, worry,
depression, fear, insomnia and all kinds of negative mental states, and
even clinical mental disorders.

To be sure, these pleasure-seekers in
their old age will suffer double anguish. Externally, because of the
degeneration of their sense-faculties, they experience the frustration
of the sensual happiness. Internally, they are subject to the formation
and arising of unskillful feelings such as fear, anxiety, stress, and
depression, and the frustration of the external happiness intensifies
these negative emotions even more. This seems to be a very unhappy life
in old age.

Wise people not only develop the ability
to seek for external objects to satisfy sensual desires, they develop
the potential for creativity to create in themselves various positive
mental qualities and inner happiness. We are usually advised by the
Buddha to develop five skillful qualities as the constant factors of the
mind, namely joy, delight, relaxing calm, happiness and concentration.
These five qualities will keep away all negative emotions and
unhappiness. It is the development of the ability to create happiness or
to be happy. As this second kind of happiness is an internal mental
quality independent of material objects outside, the person who has
developed it becomes, in contrast to the pleasure-seeker, the possessor
of happiness. In their old age, the elderly should learn to develop more
and more inner happiness so that they will enjoy lives of peace, freedom
and happiness.

There is still a higher level of
happiness. It is happiness beyond all formations. This is the highest
kind of happiness, to be realized through the liberating wisdom or
insight into the true nature of things.

In the way of liberating the mind
through wisdom and insight, we are advised by the Buddha to free and
learn the truth of things at every step. Aging and death are among the
facts of life that should be constantly reviewed. In the words of the
Buddha:

"These five
facts of life should be again and again contemplated by everyone,
whether female or male, whether layperson or monk:

"I am subject to old age: I am not freed from it.
"I am subject to disease: I am not freed from it.
"I am subject to death: I am not freed from it.
"There will be division and separation from all that is dear to
me.
"I am the owner of my actions: whatever I do, whether good or
bad, I become heir to it."

Death, in particular, which is the
central point or culmination of these facts, is a special focus of
contemplation. Buddhists are advised to practice mindfulness or
contemplation of death (maranasati). This mindfulness or
contemplation is far different from imagination or fanciful thinking,
which often leads to fear, sorrow and downheartedness. That is called
unwise attention. The right and wise contemplation of death leads to the
acceptance of the fact of the impermanence of life, and
further to leading a life of diligence or earnestness to get the best of
life before it comes to an end. Furthermore, it leads to the
realization of the truth of the impermanence of all things. The insight
into the true nature of all things will bring about wisdom that
liberates the mind. The mind of the wise who realize the truth, being
freed, is set to equilibrium and stands in equanimity. The person who is
in this state of being is in the position to enjoy the highest
happiness.

Some of the disciples of the Buddha
attained to enlightenment and final freedom even at the moment of death.
For those who have not realized the final goal of perfect freedom, at
the moment of death they are advised to die with a clear and peaceful
mind, unconfused.

In short, three points should be
observed concerning aging and death. First, aging and death are plain
facts of life, the contemplation of which may lead to insight into the
truth of all things. Second, aging and death can be an opportunity for
the development of a good life, we should make the best out of them.
Third, relying on aging and death, even the ageless and the deathless
can be attained to.